How does the eG Node.js BTM Work?

The eG Node.js BTM is currently capable of monitoring business transactions to web sites / e-commerce sites.

To be able to track the live transactions of the Node.js applications to web sites / e-commerce sites, eG Enterprise requires that a special eG Node.js Profiler be deployed.

If more Node.js applications are in the transaction path, then, the Profiler will have to be installed on each of the Node.js applications, for end-to-end visibility. 

The eG Node.js Profiler employs an advanced ‘tag-and-follow’ technique to trace the complete path of each business transaction. When doing so, it auto-discovers the applications the transaction travels through, and automatically ascertains what remote service calls were made by the transaction when communicating with the servers. In addition, the Profiler performs the following tasks for every unique transaction on a Node.js application:

• Tracks requests to that transaction;
• Measures the average responsiveness of that transaction to the requests;
• Identifies the slow, stalled, and error transactions, and computes the count of such transactions;
• Ascertains the exit calls made by the transaction, the destination of the calls, and measures the time taken by each call;
• Stores all the aforesaid statistics in memory

The Profiler then sends all these statistics to the eG agent. To know how and when the Profiler transmits metrics to the eG agent, refer to How does the Node.js Profiler Communicate with the eG Agent?

The eG agent deployed on a remote host or on the BTM-enabled Node.js application periodically runs a Node.js Business Transactions test. This test communicates with the Profiler via a configured BTM port, pulls the metrics stored in memory, and reports them to the eG manager for display in the eG monitoring console.